Sentiment And Jokes At Farewells In the House

By ANNE E. KORNBLUT and JEFF ZELENY

Published: December 9, 2006

Representative Charles B. Rangel tried to do something graceful on Friday. He wished a very public happy birthday to his longtime nemesis, Representative Bill Thomas, the departing chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

In an exchange on the House floor, Mr. Thomas, Republican of California, informed Mr. Rangel, Democrat of New York, that his birthday was a few days ago and asked what Mr. Rangel had done for him lately.

''We're saying goodbye,'' Mr. Rangel said with a smile, drawing out his words and waving farewell.

In bursts of giddiness and remorse, members of Congress went through not just the end of the 109th Congress this week, but also 12 years of Republican control. It was the end of an era, and Republicans left Capitol Hill with spasms of amusement, anger and humiliation, at times visibly stunned that power and its trappings had vanished so fast.

They cleared out their belongings, leaving the hallways full of broken furniture and overflowing trash bins. They gave emotional farewell speeches on the floor.

They tried -- rather unsuccessfully -- to wrap up business, displaying a lack of legislative discipline that was a sharp contrast to the machinelike efficiency of their early years in charge.

Some lawmakers, like Senator Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, walked off in a huff.

Representative Charles Bass, Republican of New Hampshire, paused to ruminate about his party's descent as he descended to the temporary quarters allocated to incumbents who lost on Nov. 7, a cluster of cubicles in the basement of a House office building.

''When I was elected in 1994, there were seven of us,'' Mr. Bass said, referring to the cadre of New England Republicans who long made up the moderate wing of his party. ''It's been downhill ever since. And now we're down to one.''

Indeed, the end of the current Congress means the departure of all House Republicans from New England except for Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut. For the first time since 1976, there will be no one named Chafee representing Rhode Island in the Senate.

Nearly 12 Republican retirements and almost 24 defeats of incumbent means the loss of some of the best known, and most colorful, characters of recent decades.

Representative Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, the longtime House Judiciary Committee chairman, will be gone. So will Representative Katherine Harris, famous or infamous for her role as secretary of state in Florida in the 2000 presidential election. As will Representative J. D. Hayworth of Arizona, a formerly brazen member of the new Republican breed elected in 1994.

Representative Jim Leach of Iowa, a 30-year veteran of the House and a moderate Republican who lost his seat, lamented that ''the great center of American politics'' was no longer represented in Congress.

''If you think of American history, the best and the brightest gravitated to politics,'' Mr. Leach said recently after addressing the House. ''Today, that is less the case.''

He said he believed that he was leaving a Congress far more dysfunctional than when he arrived, adding, ''The public swings from being slightly left of center to slightly right of center, but the politics are well to the right of center to well to the left of center.''

The final moments of the week should have presented a last-dash opportunity for Republicans to consider core items of the conservative agenda, the chance to put in a parting word, however symbolic, on issues like abortion.

Instead, the 12 years of Republican discipline began to wither. House Republicans failed to pass an antiabortion measure, struggled to approve a package extending popular tax breaks and decided not even to bother trying to find a solution for the spending bills. Atmospherically, the place began to look like a sprawling rummage sale, as members departed and others swapped spaces.

A few dozen gold-embossed books, commemorating the Congressional tributes on Ronald Reagan's death in 2004, were tossed into the heap next to the office of E. Clay Shaw Jr., a Florida Republican who was defeated. When word spread about the books, young Republican aides began scooping them from the garbage.

Other scavengers, some with backpacks and some in business suits, traipsed up and down the hallways of the House office buildings. Cleaning crews moved from empty suite to empty suite, confronting years' worth of debris.

In the basement of the Rayburn building, the more than 20 Republicans who involuntarily lost their seats crammed into a single office, for some of them the closest they would come to having space in the most vaunted House office building.

''I finally got a Rayburn office, but it's in the basement,'' said Representative Chris Chocola, Republican of Indiana. On the other side of the Capitol, Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania met with his successor, Bob Casey, for nearly an hour on Thursday, their longest encounter apart from their televised debates.

But Mr. Santorum, a Republican whose once-steady rise in politics ended with a resounding defeat, refused to be photographed with Mr. Casey, and brushed past reporters in his closing days in the Capitol.

In a departing act as House majority leader, John A. Boehner of Ohio sent a memorandum to Republican members of Congress. He waxed nostalgic over the close of the session, saying the Contract With America had ended.

''Chastened and humbled by our defeat at the ballot box, Republicans have taken a critical look inward,'' Mr. Boehner wrote. ''We've looked back at our greatest success, in search of lessons to guide us as we move ahead.''

He warned members that life would change considerably.

''I'm not looking forward to serving in the minority during the next two years,'' Mr. Boehner said.

But he added that it would be a good lesson and motivation to regain control of the House in two years and end any feeling of complacency from their 12-year run.

''If such an entitlement mentality did creep in, it should now be dead and gone,'' Mr. Boehner wrote. ''And the humbling conditions Republicans face during the first few months of 2007 will stamp out any trace that remains.

''The end of our Republican majority was not inevitable. Nor is the return of our majority two years from now. Our fate is in our own hands, and that of the American people we were elected to serve.''

Photos: Lincoln Chafee, whose loss ended the Senate tenure of the Chafees from Rhode Island, packed memorabilia.; Calvin Williams, moving furniture from the office of Representative Marcy Kaptur, Democrat of Ohio. (Photographs by Andrew Councill for The New York Times)